I could picture him on his quarter-deck, watchful, quiet, his orders few and terse. This was no emergency to him; it was only the day's work. The hands sensed his confidence as well as his care. My heart lifted with theirs in the joy of the home-coming.
People from the settlements began to gather to watch the ship come in. Among them was a black-bearded man to whom I touched my cap. He was Captain John Phillips, master and half-owner of the schooner Vindictive. He was above my father in learning and wealth, but they were long neighbors, mutual respecters, and, whenever their paths crossed, sharers of tots of rum and conferees in grave talk. Beside him stood Captain Andrew Starbuck, a whaler from Nantucket.
Captain Phillips acknowledged my salute and gave me one of his slow smiles.
"Why, Homer Whitman, I'm not surprised to see ye here, and 'tis a happy morning for ye, or I miss my guess."
" 'Twill be happier, sir, when she's passed Black Rock."
I wanted him to answer 'twas as good as done. I need have no concern—so my ears ached to hear—when his old friend Cap'n Whitman turned toward home. He did not answer at all, and instead looked at the vessel, less than a mile from us now, with Black Rock an equal distance on her larboard bow. A deep line came into sight between his grave gray eyes.
"Cap'n Starbuck, has the wind risen a bit?" he asked.
"Not that I notice, Cap'n Phillips," his companion answered.
Captain Phillips started to say something more, but kept a closed mouth. I looked long at the ship, then turned to him.
"If you please, Cap'n, why did you think the wind had risen?"
"Ye ask me fair, and I'll tell ye, for ye've right to know. I didn't think so. But I could be mistaken, and 'twas the most welcome explanation for something I see."
"What do you see, if ye'll kindly tell me."
"I don't doubt you see it yourself. The Eagle's not cutting water as she ought."
I had seen it, but denied it. As she came in on a windward tack, she kept making too much leeway. Her helm would be close up. Pa would be ordering her hauled closer still. Now he gave further orders. They were to shake out reefs of the two mainsails and another out of the spanker. We saw them fill.
Still she kept falling off. I had felt the cold wind biting my bones only a few minutes ago, but now my flesh grew numb. I dared not look into the two grave faces with such watchful eyes.
"I don't like the look of it, Cap'n Phillips, I tell ye." Captain Starbuck broke forth when long and aching minutes had dragged away.
"Nay, nor I."
Nay, nor I, either. The Eagle of Maine had got too far to leeward to the liking of anyone here. There was quite a crowd now, bigger than I had realized at first, it being silent and standing still. Mainly they were families and friends of various men of my father's crew. A few were merchants from the town.
A wild impulse came to me to raise a cry for help. If I did, the people would pretend not to hear me or turn their faces from my shame. The issue would be decided before they could run and launch boats; if my father, Captain Whitman, had decided to abandon ship before then, he would launch his own boats. Of this there was no chance—no hope would be a woman's way to put it—for captains cannot leave their vessels to be broken to pieces every time they hove into danger. He was committed to the trial. He had spread all the sail her shuddering masts could carry; now he must make his run or drift into the rocks. If the moment should come when he knew he would fail, it would be too late to save life.
"What makes her so slow to come up, Cap'n Phillips?" Captain Starbuck asked. "She was yare as any vessel out of Casco Bay save for three or four. What ails her, think ye?"
"I'll tell ye what I believe. She's up from warm water, and I fear her bottom's foul with barnacle. It can happen overnight, or so it seems. Sometimes a master won't notice her drag until he must tack for her life. Then she's too dull to cut water."
"If she can clear Black Rock, she'll make it in."
"Aye."
There fell a long silence which at last I must break.
"Ain't she about to clear it, Cap'n Phillips? It looks so to me."
"God forbid that she strike it!" There was a fervor in his voice I had never heard before.
Then a grievous weakness came upon me, so that I closed my eyes. When I opened them, only one deep breath later, the Eagle of Maine was swinging broadside to the wind.
A strange sound rose from the crowd, not loud, but eloquent of terror and despair. It was the most awful human cry I had ever heard. The ship lurched on a few lengths further, still clean-cut, vivid in cruelly brilliant sunshine, beautiful in the presence of death, then her larboard quarter struck the rock.
Every man forward of the mast was knocked down by the shock. We had seen them, small in the distance all this while—standing still a space, then moving quickly to obey the master's orders, then standing still again; they were men 'fore the mast, but every one was a man, as sure as God. My two brothers stood among them, but I had not picked them out even by guess; I knew surely, with such assurance that comes but rarely in a man's life, that all were my brothers. Suddenly all those by the bow lay prone upon the deck.
I saw them get up. Some leaped up, one hauled himself up. None of them doubted what would happen now; but their captain was shouting orders, and they would obey them to the last.
The ship broached to. Listing to larboard, she careened off the rock and drifted broadside with the seas into the breakers beyond. By now the mate had dropped all his sails. The helm had been put hard over, to try to bring her bow into the wind and give time to launch boats. But she lurched on, the crew on the doomed vessel and we watchers on the shore waiting in strange stillness for her to strike again.
We did not see the reef that gave her the mortal blow: we only saw her check and her men fall down. Still the invisible might of the wind and the rush of seas on her broadside flung her from reef to reef, almost on her beam-ends now, until some horn of rock gored and caught her fast, there to breathe her last. She had seemed to breathe when she had sailed forth on her brave adventures, so alive she was. In a few seconds more, she died.
She had not yet broken up and would not for an hour or more, so stoutly was she made. People watching from the beach could still make out reminders of her beautiful form. But most of her crew had been knocked or had crawled overside in the hope against hope of getting to shore alive—the final fight against the sea that was their right, now that their ship was lost and no boat could reach them.
Only four people still clung to the steeply listed deck, and it seemed to me they were trying to join hands. Then I wished there had been five, for the dead ship rolled on her side, and these, too, were gone.
The long watch was almost over. Every soul of the ship's company had been lost, and all her dead except three had been washed on shore or found in the surf. Of these three missing, only one was my very own—my brother Jesse, seventeen and the next youngest to me. He and two shipmates were still at sea in a way of thinking more strange than any dream; but they would have come in hours ago unless caught in the reefs, and now the falling wind was in the northwest, and the tide was going out.
In the last glimmer of the sun, Captain John Phillips came to a little place on the beach where I kept watch and vigil. I touched my cap to him and waited for him to speak. He was slow to begin, but when the words came forth, their tone was man-to-man and their burden plain.
"Can ye give me ear, Homer Whitman?"
"Aye, sir."